Bullets Over Bedlam

by Peter Brandvold

  Hawk dropped to one knee. He placed a hand along her cheek, ran his thumb across her chin, then leaned over her, pressed his lips to hers. The coolness of her lips made his stomach tighten. He stared into her eyes, and she quirked a half smile, a dim, copper light dancing far back in her eyes.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He stood, walked over to the grulla, and grabbed the canteen from around the saddle horn. The canteen had been full when he’d left Bedlam, but he’d given half to the grulla. What was left was no doubt warm. He squatted beside the spring, smoothed the surface scum away from the black pool, and submerged the canteen. Water gurgled through the spout, and the flask grew heavy.

  Lifting it from the pool, Hawk took a drink to make sure it tasted fresh, then walked back to Juliana.

  “It isn’t cold,” he said, removing the cork and dropping to one knee beside her. “But it isn’t half bad for—”

  He froze with the canteen partly lowered to her lips. Her eyes stared right through him, lips parted slightly, her chest still.

  Hawk’s voice quivered. “Juliana?”

  He touched her shoulder. There was no reaction. He set down the canteen and lowered his right ear to her lips. No rustle of breath. His chest grew heavy and a knot grew in his throat as he set his hand upon her bosom, feeling no heartbeat.

  His own heart raced for a time, and then it slowed gradually. Tears dribbled down his cheeks, though his eyes remained hard.

  Finally, he leaned down, kissed her lips, then lifted her hand and kissed the smooth flesh above the knuckles.

  Behind his eyes, he saw Jubal drop from the wind-battered cottonwood on the rain-swept hill. He watched Linda’s lithe body, hanging slack from the tree in their backyard, turn gently in the breeze, the morning light turning her blond hair to gold.

  Hawk flinched as if from a sharp slap, then ran his fingers lightly over Juliana’s face, closing her eyes. He crossed her hands on her chest, squeezed them gently, then rose with a low, involuntary groan that welled up from deep inside.

  Down canyon, horse hooves thumped and clattered. He turned to see a thin veil of dust rising from the eastern canyon floor.

  Hawk glanced once more at Juliana, then turned, walked back to the grulla, slid the Winchester from the saddle boot, and levered a shell into the breach.

  20.

  SARADEE’S REVENGE

  PALOMAR Rojas stood outside Green’s saloon’s batwing doors, puffing a stubby, black cheroot as he stared westward.

  At high noon, the light fell brassily over Bedlam, making the abandoned hovels lining the street look even more godforsaken than usual. A dust devil danced over the dry stone fountain in the middle of the trash-littered square and fizzled. The straw, chicken feathers, and flecks of dried goat dung settled over the boardwalk in front of what once had been a barbershop.

  Behind Rojas, Leo Baskin’s boots pounded down the stairs at the back of the saloon. The barman, who had made countless trips to Flagg’s room with whiskey, fresh bandages, or tobacco, stopped at the bottom landing. His broken nose gave his voice a nasal quality.

  “When you suppose that son of a bitch is gonna give up the ghost?”

  Rojas glanced into the saloon’s perpetually murky shadows. He swept a fly from his face and puffed, stretching his lips back from the wet cheroot in his teeth. “Maybe I should encourage him a little, huh?”

  “Better wait,” Baskin said, heading for the bar with one of the several empty whiskey bottles he’d removed from Flagg’s room. He tossed the bottle into a barrel with a loud, glassy clatter. “We’ll see if those deputies return for him. If not, I’m not gonna keep servin’ him whiskey and tendin’ his wounds. Bastard’s gonna drink himself to death sooner or later, anyway, and I got a sneakin’ suspicion no one’d miss him.”

  Rojas was staring west again, sucking and puffing the cigar. “They will not return. Hawk will return in another day, maybe two.” He smiled. “The buzzards and the wolves will pick and scatter the deputies’ bones . . . and it will be as if they had never lived.” He smiled, impressed by his melodrama.

  “But am I gonna have any whiskey left?” Baskin said, slamming a fresh bottle on the bar top. “There’s the question I want answered.”

  “Piss in an empty bottle,” Rojas advised. “He won’t know the difference.”

  “I’m just about out of bandage cloth, too.”

  Rojas snorted. “You worry too much, Leo.” He turned and started back into the saloon, but stopped when a dog yipped behind him and a horse whinnied shrilly.

  “Who the hell’s that dog after now?” growled Baskin from behind the bar.

  About fifty yards from Rojas, a horse and rider were being harassed by the little three-legged cur that hung around Miguel Taibo’s goat pens. The dog yipped at the big palomino’s left rear hock as the horse reared slightly and swung its rump toward the opposite side of the street.

  The girl astride the horse—a lean, high-breasted blonde, dressed in men’s trail garb but most definitely a senorita to make a man’s blood roil—drew one of the two pistols thonged low on her hips. Holding the reins taut in her left hand, she snapped off two shots with her right.

  The slugs blew up grit and cobble shards around the little dog, which screeched, wheeled on its sole rear leg, and disappeared between the hovels on the street’s south side.

  The blonde stared after the dog. She took a moment to replace the two spent shells in the Colt’s cylinder, then, looking around cautiously and readjusting the red velvet pillow padding her saddle, swung the horse back into the street and nudged it forward. When she spied Rojas standing on the saloon’s porch, she turned the palomino toward the saloon. The magnificent horse approached slowly, hanging its head and breathing hard, its cream-bronze coat glistening with sweat.

  The girl pulled up to the hitch rack and stopped. A smear of dirt on her right cheek somehow pointed up the beauty of her smooth-skinned, suntanned, heart-shaped face. “If that’s your dog, I wasn’t tryin’ to kill him, just trim his tail a little.”

  Rojas wasn’t sure which impressed him more, the high-busted blonde in the beaded vest over a blue-checked shirt, or the broad-chested horse she straddled. Baskin had walked up to flank him on the other side of the door. “I wish someone would trim more than his tail,” the barman said.

  “Bad luck to shoot a three-legged dog.” The girl glanced around the street, then shuttled her blue eyes back to the old bandito. “Where’s the posse?”

  Rojas had removed the cheroot from his teeth. Now he replaced it and, holding it between his lips with a gnarled, brown hand, gave it a few pensive puffs as he studied her. “What posse might you be talking about, senorita?”

  “The posse of seven that came here after Hawk.” She shifted her weight on the pillow, wincing slightly, then leaned forward and rested her arm on the saddle horn. “I’m guessing the coyotes are wrestling over their bones up in the mountains by now, but I’d be particularly interested in the fate of their leader, one D.W. Flagg. Might even be worth a few dollars to you.”

  Rojas and Baskin shared a glance, the barman’s lips stretching a taut smile beneath his swollen, purple nose and bloodshot eyes. “How many’s a few?”

  “Well, let’s see now.” The blonde hipped around in her saddle, reached into a saddlebag, and produced a small bundle of tightly wrapped greenbacks. One-handed, she riffled the bills, her blue eyes crossing slightly as she inspected them, then tossed the bundle onto the boardwalk. They hit the boards with a soft thump.

  Baskin pushed through the batwings and crouched to scoop the money off the porch’s scarred floor. He ran a finger over one end, riffling the bills, then turned to Rojas. “Jesus Christ, there’s a hundred dollars here!”

  Rojas took another slow puff from his cigar, his brown eyes flashing whimsically. “Miss, uh . . .”

  “Jones.”

  “Miss Jones, perhaps you should alight and allow Senor Baskin to buy you a drink?”

  She raked her eyes acros
s both men, narrowing her eyes with cunning and swinging her right leg over the palomino’s rump. “Perhaps.”

  When she’d looped her reins over the hitch rack and mounted the porch, she stopped before Rojas, plucked the cheroot from between his lips, stuck it between her own, and puffed. She rolled the cigar to one corner of her mouth, giving the old bandito a level stare.

  “Keep in mind, I only drink with hombres who make it worth my time.”

  Rojas watched her take several puffs off his cigar, and swallowed, feeling his face warm and his heart speed up as her lips opened and closed around the thick, black cylinder.

  She glanced at Baskin. “And I certainly wouldn’t want to waste time on men who’d take advantage of my”—she nibbled the cigar—“innocence.”

  Baskin winced as if from a physical pain, and glanced at the two well-oiled, pearl-gripped Colts thonged low on her hips. “Miss Jones, I’d never think of it. And I can assure you Senor Rojas wouldn’t, either.”

  “Sí,” rasped the old bandit.

  “Well,” said Saradee, removing the cigar from her lips and poking it back into Rojas’s mouth, “let’s see about that drink, then.”

  She followed Baskin into the empty, dark saloon. She bellied up to the bar as Baskin walked around behind it and Rojas sat tenderly down at a table near the door and slapped a greasy card deck onto the table’s scarred surface.

  “Just got a fresh bottle out for the gent upstairs,” Baskin said. “He won’t mind if you have a shot or two from it. Probably won’t know the difference.”

  As Baskin splashed whiskey into the shot glass before Saradee, Rojas chuckled behind her, shuffling his cards. Saradee picked up the filmy glass in her gloved hand, studied the whiskey, then threw it back.

  Above her head, a familiar voice shouted, “Goddamnit, Baskin, if you don’t hurry up with that bottle I’m gonna start shooting through the floor!”

  Saradee froze with her head tilted back, the shot glass still pressed to her lips. She stared at the glass’s thick bottom, a single bead of whiskey dribbling over her lower lip and into her mouth, burning like pepper. Slowly, she lowered the glass and set it on the bar top without a sound.

  Baskin smiled. “His men rode out west after Hawk. Me and Rojas don’t think they’ll be back.” He splashed another shot into Saradee’s glass and corked the bottle. “Perhaps you’d like to deliver this to my guest upstairs?”

  Saradee’s face was hot. She closed her fingers around the glass, squeezed it, raised it to her lips, and threw it back. She set the glass down and smacked her lips.

  “Perhaps.”

  She shook her hair off her shoulders, picked up the bottle, and glanced at Rojas. He held his cards in his hands, smiling at her around his dead cigar, little longer than a sewing thimble.

  Holding the bottle by the neck, Saradee removed a leather quirt from a pocket of the beaded vest she’d pulled off the tall, one-eyed outlaw she’d ventilated, then sauntered over to the stairs and began climbing one step at a time.

  “Room four,” Baskin said.

  “Obliged.”

  She gained the top of the stairs and strode to room four. Turning the knob, she nudged the door wide.

  Flagg sat on the far side of the room in a Windsor chair angled so that he could see westward down the village’s main street. His boots were crossed on the window sill. The room smelled like piss, shit, overripe bandages, and tobacco.

  On the other side of a heavy smoke cloud, Flagg turned his haggard, gray-bearded face toward Saradee. His skin looked like chalk, and his gray eyes were red-rimmed above sagging, lead-colored pouches. Both arms were suspended in slings and wrapped in bloody bandages. He held a thin cigar between the first two fingers of his right hand.

  Flagg scowled at Saradee, giving her a long once-over before his eyes suddenly darkened with recognition, and he stiffened in his chair.

  “Hello, Marshal.” Saradee grinned and raised the bottle, indicating his bloody arms. “I see you found Hawk.”

  Flagg grunted and winced as he dropped his right hand toward the pistol on his thigh. He cursed as he realized he couldn’t lower his hand with the sling around it. Trying another tactic, he began slowly backing the arm out of the sling, groaning and panting like a whipped dog.

  Saradee laughed, set the bottle on a washstand, and strode casually toward him. He looked up at her, eyes widening as, just before he got his hand out of the sling, she reached down and slipped the gun from his holster. He clawed at it, missing by several inches.

  Saradee flipped the gun, caught it by the barrel, then smashed the butt over the bloody bandage on his arm.

  “Ahhh!”

  Flagg sagged over in the chair, holding the quivering arm taut to his side, his face turning even whiter than before. “Bitch!”

  Again, Saradee slung the revolver’s butt against the bloody bandage on Flagg’s arm. He howled.

  Saradee grabbed his chin, turned his face toward her, and stuck the barrel of Flagg’s Remington in his mouth. He gagged and tried to pull away. She thumbed the hammer back and he froze, staring up at her along both sides of the revolver.

  His eyes twitched as he awaited a bullet. The bandage on his right arm shone brightly with fresh blood.

  “I’m calling a note due, Marshal Flagg. You’re gonna climb onto the bed, and I’m going to tie you up like you did me.” She ripped a sheet off the bed and held up the braided leather quirt. “Remember this?”

  Flagg glowered at her, eyes rheumy from whiskey. Sweat streaked his face. His left eye twitched.

  Saradee rammed the revolver’s barrel deeper down his throat. Gagging, he nodded frantically.

  “You’re gonna stand up and pull your pants down for Saradee. Aren’t you?”

  Flagg just stared up at her through rheumy eyes, veins forking above his nose. As she adjusted her grip on the pistol and took up the trigger slack, he nodded frantically again.

  Saradee removed the gun from his mouth, spittle stringing off the end of the barrel. He gagged for nearly a minute, tears washing down his cheeks. Saradee backed away from him, keeping the cocked revolver aimed at his face.

  “I hope you have a thicker hide than I do,” she said, rubbing her butt with her free hand.

  “You can’t do this to me, goddamnit,” Flagg gasped. “I’m a United States marshal!” He canted his head toward the door. “Baskin!”

  Saradee wagged the gun, ordering him up, then aimed the barrel at his face. Slowly, wincing as he pushed his elbows against the chair arms, Flagg gained his feet. He stood looking down at her, his pupils narrowing devilishly as though he were contemplating trying to grab the gun from her hand.

  Taunting him, she wagged the revolver at his pants.

  He looked at his black denims, as if surprised to see them on his legs, then looked again at Saradee. He opened his mouth to speak. She edged the gun higher, slitting one eye and tightening her jaws.

  Again, he canted his head toward the door. “Baskin, get this crazy bitch out of my room!”

  Saradee fired the Remy. Flagg winced and jerked his head back, then rolled his eyes to the right, as if trying to see the slight notch she’d carved in his ear. He shuttled his gaze back to her, wide eyes bright with horror.

  Saradee cocked the revolver and canted the barrel toward his crotch. “Better get to work, or I’m gonna make Mrs. Flagg a very frustrated woman.”

  Flagg blinked and stretched his lips back from his teeth as a fine stream of blood dribbled down from his ear. “I’m gonna have my deputies hunt you down. There’ll be nowhere you can hide. Nowhere!”

  Staring at the pistol aimed at his crotch, he moved his hands to his waist, began unbuckling his pistol belt. When he’d dropped the belt and holster on the floor, he sat down on the bed, dropped his gaze to the floor. “Baskin, I’ll have your head for this, you son of a bitch!”

  Hearing only muffled chuckles below, he glanced again at Saradee, then unbuttoned his pants and began peeling them down to his boots, a slow,
painful process with his bullet-shredded arms.

  When he was naked from the waist down and his face was blotched with silent fury, he turned around and lay belly down on the bed, the springs squeaking under his weight. “You won’t get away with it,” he rasped. “You crazy bitch, I’ll hunt you down, kill you like a rogue she-griz—”

  “She-griz,” Saradee chuckled, setting the pistol aside and picking up the sheet she’d torn from the bed. “I like that. That’s kind of how I’ve always seen myself.”

  She tore four long strips from the sheet and tied Flagg’s wrists and ankles to the bedposts. The marshal cursed her all the while, and cursed Baskin and Rojas downstairs, blood seeping out from under his bandages to soak the bed beneath his arms.

  When she’d made sure that all the knots were tight, she grabbed her quirt off the washstand and stepped up to the bed, holding the quirt’s braided leather shaft in one hand while running the other along the loop at the business end, the two long, horsehair whangs hanging off the loop like streamers.

  “Where I come from, these are called rug beaters,” Saradee said, slashing the loop through the air over Flagg’s naked ass.

  His bottom was rather broad for a man’s, with patches of thin brown hair and several tender-looking saddle galls sprouting from the powder-white skin. “That’s one tender ass you have there, Flagg. You need to stop spending so much time in the office.”

  Arms stretched above his head, Flagg turned an eye to her, his chalky, sweaty face mottled red. “I’m gonna hunt you down.”

  “You won’t need to pull your shirt up,” Saradee said, ignoring him and flicking the quirt through the air once more. It made a savage whistle. “Your ass is all I want.”

  As the last two words left her mouth, she slammed the quirt down resolutely upon Flagg’s ass. Flagg made no sound, just lifted his head straight off the bed and pulled at the ties holding his wrists to the bedposts.

  A dark-pink welt rose instantly across the middle of both buttocks.

  “Doesn’t feel very good, does it, Marshal?” She swung the quirt over her shoulder, the noose flopping against her back. She raised it high, slammed it down on Flagg’s butt.